Category: Quick bibliographies

January 6 2021 assault on the US Capitol

What do followers of authoritarianism believe?

Quick bibliographies

What do people who support authoritarian leaders believe? Why do some people support political violence? “For over 80 years, political psychologists … have studied the authoritarian personality—a collection of attitudes and behaviors that increase a person’s susceptibility to authoritarian leaders. We have found that authoritarian followers share three tendencies: they obey authority figures from their in-group (called authoritarian submission); they punish rule breakers (authoritarian aggression);…

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Striped cat lying curled in a wooden bowl

Cats as pets and companions: are there mental and physical health benefits for humans?

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Pet ownership/pet companionship has been shown to bring both mental health and physical health benefits to humans. But that is often most associated with dogs. But what about cats? Opinion has been more divided there. What does the research say? Featured articles: *Dinis, F. A. B. D. S. G., & Martins, T. L. F. (2016). Does cat attachment have an effect on human health? A…

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Corruption and power: the connection

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Was Lord Acton right? “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Or, is it more as John Steinbeck described “Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts… perhaps the fear of a loss of power”? Is there a connection between having power (in politics, government, business, etc.) and becoming or being corrupt? There seem to be examples all around us and, yet, we also see…

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The “power of the summary”: why do we prefer and trust AI-generated summaries over doing the summarization ourselves?

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The easy answer is that it is much faster and requires less effort to click a button and get a custom summary of academic papers and their connections–rather than spending the time and mental effort to do it yourself. Or, is this preference just an extension of the utility of abstracts that have been used to summarize academic papers for decades–long before the public rise…

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Authoritarianism and corruption

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Authoritarianism and corruption go together. “Corruption is the misuse of public power for private gain and has become a worldwide problem for economies and social development.” Together, authoritarianism and corruption weaken societies–accentuate existing divisions, create new ones, increase inequality, spread distrust, and make a society less stable and less able to respond effectively and coherently to challenges–like disease, poverty, and violence. Voters turn to authoritarians…

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Air pollution: one of the world’s greatest public health threats

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“Air pollution is one of the world’s greatest public health threats, reducing global life expectancy more than smoking, alcohol or childhood malnutrition. Recent studies estimate that fine particulate matter called PM2.5—pumped out by cars, factories, woodstoves and wildfires—causes nearly nine million premature deaths annually.” [Greenspan, J. (2023). Air Pollution Is Really Dangerous, Even More New Evidence Shows: Dirty air has been linked to poor health outcomes, ranging from suicidality…

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What is death?

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“Just as birth certificates note the time we enter the world, death certificates mark the moment we exit it. This practice reflects traditional notions about life and death as binaries. We are here until, suddenly, like a light switched off, we are gone.  But while this idea of death is pervasive, evidence is building that it is an outdated social construct, not really grounded in…

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p53 and cancer

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p53 is a tumor suppressor protein that is the most commonly mutated gene in tumor/cancer cells. p53 is the most important and most widely studied of the tumor suppressor genes. Mutations in p53 are found in approximately 50% of all human cancers. The most studied tumor suppressor function of p53 is tied to apoptosis (programmed cell death). Cancer therapies that involve mutated tumor suppressor genes…

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Extreme heat, Phoenix Arizona USA- July 2023

Extreme heat: impacts and consequences

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Extreme heat is becoming the “new normal” for many areas of the world. The summer of 2023, for example, has seen some of the hottest days in modern history. Extreme heat is now a regular headline: How Extreme Heat Affects Workers and the Economy (New York Times) The heat index reached 152 degrees in the Middle East — nearly at the limit for human survival…

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Dust storm in Texas (USA)

Dust storms in the United States: a mixture of corporate agriculture and climate change

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The Great Plains and Midwest regions of the Unted States are seeing more and larger dust storms and higher levels of dust in the atmosphere. The increase has corresponded to an intensification of corporate agricultural practices in these regions–an example is the plowing of grasslands and marginal agricultural land in order to grow more corn for the production of biofuels. Even modest corn production on…

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